Frequently Asked Questions

FAQ's

Cryonics is a technique intended to save lives by using temperatures so cold that the body can be preserved and revived in a future time. The process aims to “pause” the body’s decay in an effort to give patients a second chance when superior future medicine can restore them to good health.

A person who can be resuscitated is not dead. Therefore, if cryonics patients are preserved well enough that they might someday be resuscitated, then they aren’t dead: they are cryopreserved.

The biggest difference between being declared legally “dead” and brain dead is the existence or absence of cellular brain function. Legally dead, in most cases, simply means that the heart has stopped beating, in which case many people have been “revived” through defibrillator, or shocking. A cryopreserved patient is not considered inevitably dead because we believe they can be helped by superior medicine in a future time. Therefor, a person who can be resurrected is not dead.

Yes, there is. Many biological specimens, including whole insects, many types of human tissue including brain tissue, and human embryos have been cryogenically preserved, stored at liquid nitrogen temperature where all decay ceases, and revived. This leads scientists to believe that the same can be done with whole human bodies, and that any minimal harm can be reversed with future advancements in medicine.

Even though a mammal has not been fully frozen at cryogenic temperatures and revived, similar tests have been done on monkeys and dogs. The animals had their blood removed and the cryoprotectant inserted. The animals were then cooled to temperatures under 0 degrees Celsius and fully revived.

Ideally, the cryonics procedure should start within minutes, or at the very least an hour, after death. Longer delays place a greater burden on future technology to reverse injury and restore the brain to a healthy state, and make it less likely that the correct original state can be determined. Relocation after death can take several hours or even close to a day, which only adds to the possible complications of the cryonics procedure.

Once the deceased is pronounced brain dead, which would happen if the body is left unfrozen for a considerable amount of time, there is no further use in freezing the body, as that person would not be able to be revived again in the future.

Sadly, that is currently unknown. Cryonics is based on the belief that technology will advance. The ultimate goal is for patients to be revived when medical technologies are available to do so. This is dependent on the speed of progression for technology in the future and the quality of the cryopreservation of the patients (which depends on the immediacy of preservation after death.)

The answer is yes! Not only humans can be cryopreserved; in face, pets are the best cryogenic patients for the sole reason that most pet deaths are pre planned and therefor the preservation process starts immediately after their death.

The process of freezing and storing the body of a recently deceased person to prevent tissue decomposition so that at some future time the person might be brought back to life upon development of new medical cures. Someone preserved this way is said to be in cryonic suspension.